


things that can be fixed

by questionableatbest



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: NHL Derek Nurse, also tho, i'll add more characters as they end up in the story, if that's a tag?, it's also kind of a spoiler tbh but yolo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 12:30:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9896555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/questionableatbest/pseuds/questionableatbest
Summary: Will Poindexter is the handyman responsible for Derek Nurse's apartment, and Derek Nurse is a bit of a mess so Will has his work cut out for him





	

**Author's Note:**

> so guess who got bored at work today
> 
>  
> 
> (it was me, and i wrote this, and it was actually a lot of fun to write???)
> 
> (also tho like i promise i'll come up with a better title at some point probably)

Will was getting ready for bed when his phone rang, and he considered not answering it. It was late, he didn’t recognize the number, and he was exhausted, but curiosity won out in the end and he ended up being glad that it did.

He answered with his usual, “What?” and, as usual, it was barely a question. It was more a demand for whoever was on the other end to start talking or hang up and, after a moment, a man on the other end did speak up.

Of course, all he said was, “Hey, uh, shit- is this Will Poindexter?” so, really, Will would have been fine with him staying quiet.

Still, he just ran a hand through his hair and sighed and said, “Yeah, why?” and he tried to put as much exasperation into those two words as possible.

He was pretty sure that it worked, too, because the other man sounded slightly nervous when he said, “My landlord said to call you if I had any problems?” and, yeah.

Okay.

Will should probably have been a bit nicer off the bat, if this was a client, but it was late and he was tired, so he just sighed again and said, “Right,” and then asked, “What’s up?” and then-

And then the man on the other end said, “So, like, it’s no big deal or anything, but I kind of knocked over my fridge and I can’t really get it back up on my own and also, like, I think the one door might have broken?” and, for a moment, Will just blinked.

“You,” he started, and then he cut himself off and replayed everything the man had said in his head, before he started again and said, “You knocked over your fridge,” and, yeah. It still sounded ridiculous.

On the other end, the man said, “It was an accident?” and he sounded sheepish but he also sounded like he was trying not to laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing was, which was fair.

Will found a small smile growing on his face despite himself, but he shook it away quickly and he sighed instead. “Right,” he said again, and then he glanced at the clock by his bed before he went on with, “Do you mind if I wait ‘til morning to come by?” because, really. It was nearing midnight, but he’d had a few clients demand immediate help before, but he was really, really hoping that this guy wasn’t one of them.

Luckily, the man just said, “Yeah, man, of course- like, I probably won’t be around but  like, you can let yourself in or whatever, right?”

“I can get a key,” Will confirmed, and then he added, “Just text your name and address to this number, alright?” and the conversation ended quickly after that, and Will went to bed trying to ignore the fact that he was going to have to spend the next morning figuring out how to fix a fucking fridge.

//

The text from the unknown number read, _‘derek nurse, 1300 brookside cres. unit 1718,’_ and then there was another text that read, ‘thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ and Will spent a long time glaring at that string of exclamation marks.

Of course, in his defense, it was barely eight in the morning, and he was going to lift up a fridge, and he really, really didn’t like doing work in Nurse’s building, because it was way too nice and everybody who lived there had way too much money and they always looked at Dex, in his plaid shirts and jeans, like he was nothing so, really. He had a right to be vaguely disgruntled.

He also couldn’t shake the fact that he’d definitely heard the name ‘Derek Nurse,’ somewhere before, but he figured that he’d just glanced at it on a list of tenants before and left it at that.

As it turned out, Derek Nurse’s apartment was a mess.

It looked like he’d just moved in and hadn’t gotten around to unpacking, so there were boxes everywhere, furniture that was only half-assembled, and not much going on in way of decoration and, of course, there was also a fridge lying on the ground in the middle of the kitchen.

Upon closer inspection, Will realized that there was also a green stick note with a messy, ‘thank you,’ scrawled across it, sticking to the fridge with a tip tucked underneath it, and he let out a long breath instead of smiling at it.

He also realized that lifting the fridge by himself was probably some sort of a safety hazard, but he really didn’t want to call for help or wait for Nurse to get back from wherever he was so, in the end, he fashioned a lever out of a cart and wheeled the fridge up as high as he could, before he got underneath it and pushed it the rest of the way. By that point, he was sweating and panting more than he would have liked, but he was also vaguely proud of the fact that he was strong enough to actually do that.

Of course, once the fridge was upright, Will still had to figure out what damage had actually ensued and then he had to fix it, but that turned out to be relatively quick work as well. Nurse had been right about one of the doors being broke, but tightening a few screws solved that problem and then the fridge was back in working order, so Will turned it on and made his leave.

On his way out, he glanced at the Ikea furniture and, for half a second, he considered lending a hand with that too, but he shook that thought away and locked the door behind him on his way out.

//

A week later, Will woke up to his phone ringing beside his bed, and he answered it with a groggy, “What?” before he could think better of it.

It took him a moment to actually understand what the person on the other end was saying, but then he registered the words, ‘clogged sink,’ and, ‘kind of possibly slightly overflowing,’ and that was enough to wake him up entirely.

“Wait,” he said, cutting across whatever the man on the other end was saying, before he said, “Slow down and start again,” and-

And that’s what the man did, saying, “So, like, I think there’s food clogging my drain? Or something? Because, like, nothing’s going down it and now the whole thing is sort of full and, like, I don’t really know what to do?” and Will sighed.

He wiped the sleep out of his eyes and moved to sit up before he asked, “Who is this?”

On the other end, a sheepish voice replied, “Derek Nurse?” and, yeah. That’s what Will had thought, and he was even less impressed with Nurse this time around, because he was interrupting Will’s sleep and his day off, but this was also Will’s job and he couldn’t exactly blow it off, so he bit his lip and tried not to let his frustration seep into his voice, and maybe it didn’t work, but whatever.

He said, “I’ll be over in an hour,” and he was about to leave it at that and hang up, when-

“I’m on my way to work, but-”

“I’ll let myself in,” Will interrupted, and this time he really did hang up, and then he buried his face in his pillow and tried not to scream.

//

Derek Nurse’s apartment was still a mess, and the mess was significantly less endearing this time.

The Ikea furniture looked like a disaster, and the empty walls looked sad, and the boxes almost looked pathetic, and if it really didn’t look that bad and Will was just taking his bad mood out on the lack of furnishings, than that was his business. He barely ever got a day off and he’d been excited to cook and freeze a few meals and fix up a few things in his own apartment and maybe start looking at online college courses and, yeah, okay, maybe his idea of a good time was pathetic, but that was beside the point.

The point was, was that he had to fix Derek Nurse’s stupid sink, and he wasn’t happy about it.

Of course, it was just a clogged sink and, really, Will could fix that in his sleep, and he was done with it in about five seconds and the water was draining and the mess was gone and the problem was solved and Nurse had left a generous tip and a ‘thank you’ note beside the sink again, but that was also beside the point.

The point was, was that Derek Nurse was clearly just another spoiled rich kid who didn’t know how to live alone or take care of himself or handle basic household maintenance, and Will spent the rest of the day fuming over it.

//

Three days later, Will’s phone rang in the middle of the day and, when he answered it, the person on the other end said, “So what do you know about broken windows?” and Will blinked.

The voice on the other end was smooth and deep and it definitely belonged to Derek Nurse so, after a moment, Will just asked, “What did you do?” and then there was a moment of silence, before-

“I tried to kill a spider and I broke my window?”

Will blinked again, before he sighed and said, “Of course you did,” and told himself that he wasn’t going to smile at the mental picture he was conjuring, though he did say, “Dare I ask how you managed that?” because, really. If he was going to clean up the mess, he had a right to know.

On the other end, Nurse said, “Well,” and then he paused, and then Will heard him take a breath before he went on with, “It was a really big spider and, like, I didn’t want to get close to it, right? So, like, I used a hockey stick to kill it, except I maybe tried to hit it a bit too hard and, like, the window broke?” and Will blinked again, and then-

“Wait,” he said, a tiny bit incredulous, “Did you say that you just ‘tried’ to hit it? As in, you didn’t actually hit it?”

At that, Nurse let out a strangled noise that sounded more than a little bit distraught, and then he said, “Please don’t remind me,” and his voice was more of a whine than anything, and Will had to try even harder not to laugh because, really.

The whole situation was ridiculous and Nurse was all but a human disaster and, over the past few days, Will had come to realize that, yeah, okay, maybe his previous anger at the other man hadn’t been completely and entirely warranted so, in the end, he just glanced at the clock on the garage door, before he said, “I’m at work now, but I can come by this evening?”

For his part, Nurse let out a sigh that sounded vaguely relieved, before he said, “Yeah, that’d be great,” and then he added, “But I’m headed out of town now and I’ll be gone until like, Monday, so it’s no rush?” and a smirk started to grow on Will’s face.

“Really, Nurse- one spider escapes in your apartment, and you head out of town?” he asked, and he realized belatedly that it sounded dangerously close to flirting, but if Nurse noticed it than he didn’t say anything.

Instead, Nurse just let out the ugliest sounding snort that Will had ever heard, and then he said, “Cute,” and then the conversation got back to the logistics of fixing the window, and that was that.

//

Nurse’s apartment was slightly cleaner this time, if only because the boxes were gone and things seemed to be finding where they belonged. The Ikea furniture was still a mess, but Will had given up on ever seeing it assembled, so he ignored it and set to work finding the window that Nurse had victimized.

Like Nurse had said, it was in his bedroom, and Will shook off how weird it felt to be in there.

Really, he’d been working as a handyman for just over two years, and he still hadn’t gotten used to how intrusive it felt to go into people’s homes and change things, even if he was invited in and he was changing them for the better.

As it was, fixing Nurse’s window was another easy job, if only because of how uniform it was. Will had done the same thing a million times before, and muscle memory had him going through the motions like it was second nature to him, and it was work that he actually enjoyed.

He enjoyed fixing things and putting them back together and making them work again, and he enjoyed his job, and he enjoyed feeling useful, and he also kind of enjoyed helping Derek Nurse function, but he shook that thought of as soon as it hit him, and he focused on the window instead.

//

Almost two weeks went by before Will heard from Derek Nurse again, but every time his phone rang he still got a tiny bit excited, which he realized was weird and ridiculous in about a million different ways.

Still, when his phone rang and Derek’s name finally flashed across the screen, Will’s excitement was short lived because, really.

The first thing Nurse said was, “I set my stove on fire,” followed by, “Like, I put it out before the smoke detector went off and I don’t think anything’s broken, but like. There was fire,” and he sounded disgruntled and a tiny bit more worried than usual, and Will sighed.

If Nurse set something on fire, there were probably about a million different problems going on, but he decided to narrow it down to one, so he asked, “Your smoke detector didn’t go off?” and tried not to sound irritated, because he wasn’t actually irritated with Nurse.

He was irritated with the fact that there’d been a fire and a smoke detector hadn’t gone off, because that was a serious hazard, but it also wasn’t exactly Nurse’s fault, so Will just bit his lip and waited for an answer, which-

Which came when Nurse said, “Nah, man, I just like. Left the kitchen for like, five minutes, and then I came back and there were flames and shit,” and, yeah.

Will was going to check that out as soon as possible, so he sighed again and asked if he could come over, and then he turned off his oven and abandoned the food he’d been heating up, and headed for Nurse’s apartment.

//

Will made it all the way to Derek Nurse’s door before he realized that Nurse was home, at which point he stopped himself from unlocking the door and letting himself in.

Instead, he knocked, and then he put his toolbox down and crossed his arms over his chest and waited, and then-

And then Derek Nurse opened the door, and Will’s heart almost stopped because Derek Nurse was absolutely beautiful in a way that was impossible to ignore. He was practically ethereal, with features that were somehow soft and chiselled at the same time, and eyes that danced, and muscles that were impossible not to check out, and a sheepish smile that made Will’s heart sing, and-

And then there was the burning smell that wafted out of the apartment and, yeah. Will had work to do.

“You’re Derek Nurse?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and tilting his head and trying to hide the fact that he’d just been blatantly checking Nurse out, and Nurse nodded.

He said, “Yeah, man,” and then he held out a hand that Will shook, and then he said, “Thanks for- everything,” and he still looked a tiny bit nervous, so Will cracked a small, wry smile, to let him off the hook.

He also said, “It’s my job, so,” and then he nodded inside and said, “Can I- uh,” and Nurse scrambled to get out of the way.

“Yeah- yeah, of course,” he said, and then he held out his arms in a sort of welcoming gesture, and then he said, “You- know where everything is, I guess?” and Will smiled again.

He said, “More or less,” and then he headed inside, and then he stopped in his tracks when he realized that the furniture in the apartment had been assembled,  and he asked, “You finally figured that stuff out?” before he could stop himself.

For his part, Nurse rubbed the back of his neck, but he also smiled and said, “Yeah,” and then he laughed a tiny bit before he added, “My friends, Rans and Holster, came to visit this weekend, and they’re a lot better at this stuff than me, so…”

“So you finally have some place to sit?” Will prompted, and he realized that he sounded kind of rude, but Nurse laughed softly, so he figured it was fine.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he agreed, and then he tilted his head to the side and said, “Uh- so, can I help you with anything?” and Will shook his head.

“It’s cool,” he said, and then he added, “I’m literally just going to fix your smoke detectors and check out your stove, so. It’s nothing,” and Nurse still looked skeptical, but he nodded.

He also he also sat down at one of the barstools around the island in the kitchen, apparently intent on being Will’s audience, which. Which was totally fine, Will told himself, because he wasn’t thinking about how hot Nurse was, or how warm his smile was, or how completely hopeless he was.

When he finished checking out the stove and turned around to grab a cloth, he also told himself that he wasn’t thinking about the fact that he all but caught Nurse checking out his ass, because his cheeks were already bright red and he really, really couldn’t handle that.

Instead, he coughed slightly, and then he said, “You know you don’t have to supervise me, right?” and, yeah. Okay. It sounded angrier than Will had wanted it to, but that always happened when he was embarrassed, so he wasn’t entirely surprised.

Nurse, apparently, was surprised, though, because he was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Oh,” and it was heavy and flat and followed up quickly by a, “Right,” and then a, “Chill,” and then he said, “I’ll just leave you to it, then,” and then Nurse stood up and left the room before Will could even blink.

For his part, Will kind of wanted to follow Nurse and explain himself and apologize, but he stopped himself before he could do any of that because, really.

His job was to fix the smoke detector and the oven and whatever else Nurse managed to break on a semi-daily basis, and that was it. He wasn’t supposed to be friends with Nurse, and he wasn’t supposed to care that he’d hurt Nurse’s feelings, and he wasn’t supposed to care about the fact that him and his stupid mouth had gone and panicked and fucked everything up like he always did because, really.

That wasn’t his job.

His job was to fix things, so that’s what he did.

He fixed the stove and he fixed the smoke detectors and he tested all of it and, when he was positive that everything was good and safe to use, he knocked on Nurse’s bedroom door and said, “Hey, I’m heading out but, uh, everything looks good now,” and then he left before he could get a response.

**Author's Note:**

> so far the next chapter contains like 99% of dex's back story, so if you're wondering what's going on there, then you probably won't have to wonder for much longer!
> 
> and like, comments give me life, so let me know what you think?


End file.
